Nobody loves me, everybody hates me……

Isaiah 8:12-13  Do not call conspiracy everything this people calls conspiracy; do not fear what they fear, and do not dread it.  The LORD God Almighty is the one you are to regard as holy.  He is the one you are to fear!  He is the one you are to dread.   (The Message)

The King James Version uses the word confederacy instead of conspiracy.   Isaiah is under the “strong hand of the LORD,” and the LORD is warning him not to worry about what the people are thinking.  

What is a confederacy anyway?  It is a group banding together for a cause, generally illicit purposes.  A conspiracy is a “secret plan by a group to do something unlawful or harmful.”  We learn about these alliances in kindergarten!  Our grade school years teach us about bullies, cliches, and clubs.  They leave us feeling unworthy, unwanted, and lonely.  Hence, we get a good case of what I call Garden Syndrome:  “Nobody loves me, everybody hates me, I think I’ll go to the garden and eat worms.”  These experiences striving to please others and compromise all we believe in because surely I can’t be right and all these others be wrong.  I MUST be wrong and they are right.  Result?  FEAR!

The LORD is warning us through Isaiah the prophet to beware of alliances, conspiracies, confederacies.  He is asking us to trust HIM.  He is the cure for Garden Syndrome for if God is for me who can be against me?  (Romans 8:31)

We (I) must get the Father’s perspective.  My sister tells the story of her daughter who was adopted by the man my sister loved and married.  The kids at a small private school in rural Alabama teased my niece unmercifully about her adoption.  As she was crying and relating this to her Dad, instead of going to fight the battle for her, he gave her the PERFECT comeback:  “The next time they are teasing you about being adopted you tell them, that you are the lucky one because your Daddy got to choose you and their dads just got stuck with them!”  A father’s perspective!  The next morning instead of going “to the garden to eat worms” she went to school head held high and followed her Dad’s instructions and let those bullies have it!  They NEVER said another word to her about it and she became confident, unafraid to be herself and able to stand up to opposition!  She did not fear the conspiracy against her.  She was not afraid because she understood her Dad knew how to handle this confederacy!  (Trust me if this had not been sufficient he would have dealt with it for he knew all the kids and their parents!)

I just love this story!  A little girl, found security, peace, and acceptance by having “no fear” and showing the people of the confederacy that adoption (what they did not understand) was nothing to fear!  A wise father gave his princess courage because she knew she was loved! She was enough.

I often tell my own children that “rejection by others, is God’s protection.”  This is the lesson of adoption.  No matter who rejects us or why, we know our heavenly Father accepts us and has adopted us into His kingdom.  Jesus already paid the Judge to give us a new birth certificate.  We are chosen!

They Chose Me by Debbie Rice

Dedicated to BPK.  Thank you for letting me share your story!

Yvonne